Can Government Intervention in Childcare be Justified?

Childcare is not like other goods and services. Its inherent nature creates unusual challenges for efficient delivery by the market, while its usage can have social as well as private consequences. Government involvement in childcare may therefore be justified to improve the efficiency of delivery or achieve social objectives, but its effectiveness will depend on whether policy measures can better address the challenges of childcare provision than the market. This article reviews the justification for the recent rapid development of childcare policy in the UK and considers the potential benefits and drawbacks of this growing government intervention.     

Cox Point Processes: Why One Realisation Is Not Enough

We review a rich class of point process models, Cox point processes, and illustrate the necessity of more than one observation (point patterns) in performing parameter estimation. Furthermore, we introduce a new Cox point process model by treating the intensity function of the underlying Poisson point process as a random mixture of normal components. The behaviour and performance of the new model are compared with those of popular Cox point process models. The new model is exemplified with an application that involves a single point pattern corresponding to earthquake events in California, USA.     

天然气管道在线预警与定位技术应用研究

本文通过对管道光纤预警工作原理、管道光纤预警系统组成等进行阐述,进而在一定程度上为天然气管道在线预警与定位提供参考依据。     

Systemic financial risk early warning of financial market in China using Attention-LSTM model

We propose an Attention-LSTM neural network model to study the systemic risk early warning of China. Based on text mining, the network public opinion index is constructed and used as a training set to be incorporated into the early warning model to test the early warning effect. The results show that: (i) the network public opinion is the non-linear Granger causality of systemic risk. (ii) The Attention-LSTM neural network has strong generalization ability. Early warning effects have been significantly improved. (iii) Compared with the BP neural network model, the SVR model and the ARIMA model, the LSTM neural network early warning model has a higher accuracy rate, and its average prediction accuracy for systemic risk indicators has been improved over short, medium and long terms. When the attention mechanism is included in the LSTM, the Attention-LSTM neural network model is even more accurate in all the cases.     

LABOUR PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN THE LONG RUN: JAPAN, 1600–1909

This article examines long-term labour productivity change in Japan from the early seventeenth century to the nineteenth century. We constructed sectoral labour force estimates based on the methodology presented in a previous study, who provided a sectoral GDP series covering the Tokugawa period. Our results show the industrial structure in the Tokugawa period remained relatively stable in comparison with the economy after the Meiji Restoration. Nevertheless, the estimates of sectoral labour productivity suggest expansion of the market economy in Tokugawa Japan influenced the development of industrialisation after the Meiji Restoration.     

I (Could Have) Told You! Early warning indicators and crisis performance of the 12 “old” Euro-countries under the economic crisis 2008–09

The impact of the economic crisis 2008-09 was remarkably different in the 12 “old” member states in the Euro-zone. Five of them were hit especially badly; four of them even had to be bailed out by the rest in one way or another. This paper asks if one could have foretold, based solely on information available prior to 1999, which of the countries then about to enter the Euro-zone would run into economic trouble once a serious economic crisis occurred. The focus is on the (post)predictive power of three kinds of leading indicators: economic indicators, political indicators (indicating quality of governance), and indicators derived from the theory of optimal currency areas (OCA). Since there are more indicators than cases, PLS-regression is used to gauge the (post)predictive strength of the indicators examined. The results show that political indicators have quite some (post)predictive power in this case, whereas indicators derived from OCA-theory do not do too well. Economic indicators perform better than indicators derived from OCA-theory, but generally less well than the political indicators. Thus, the experience from the latest economic crisis in the Euro-zone suggests that more emphasis should be placed on the quality of governance record of a country when deciding if it should be deemed fit to become a member.     

大型装备制造业企业关键设备备件预警策略

近些年,国内一些大型装备制造企业为提高国际竞争力,从国外引进不少先进设备,但当这些设备发生故障需要更换备件却不能得到满足时,给企业造成了不同程度的损失。文章应用设备失效模式与后果分析(MFMEA)方法制定关键设备备件预警策略,有效降低关键设备停机风险及其所造成的损失。     

Activation and variation of the United Nation’s cluster coordination model: a comparative analysis of the Haiti and Japan disasters

The coordinated response to extreme events is critical as illustrated by recent disasters in Haiti and Japan. As a way for coordinated provision of international humanitarian assistance to disaster-hit countries, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) developed cluster coordination model (CCM). With content analysis and network analysis of OCHA situation reports, this study checked four premises regarding activation of CCM, interaction between national and international actors, roles of proximity country, and level of cluster coordination. This study found that there were meaningful variations in implementing the CCM for 2010 Haiti and 2011 Japan disasters. From the analyses, we found that the current CCM may be vulnerable to black swan disasters; thus, extensive and active estimation of national disaster management capacities should be conducted to prevent collapse of national disaster management system. However, the reconciliation of state sovereignty and international humanitarian assistance also should be considered.     

高校贷款融资风险评估与预警模型研究

创新高校贷款风险评估与预警模型,共筑财务系统"防火墙"。通过深入剖析高校债务风险凸显成因、影响路径及其特殊性,探索建立一套系统性强、涵盖面广、操作性强的风险评估与预警模型。并实证研究分析福建省A高校实施新校区项目所面临贷款规模、风险评估等问题,切合实际提出对策建议,为政府、高校和银行共同防范债务风险提供理论与实证依据,形成防范债务风险合力,促进高校健康、稳定、可持续发展。     

Currency crisis early warning systems: Why they should be dynamic

Traditionally, financial crisis Early Warning Systems (EWSs) have relied on macroeconomic leading indicators when forecasting the occurrence of such events. This paper extends such discrete-choice EWSs by taking the persistence of the crisis phenomenon into account. The dynamic logit EWS is estimated using an exact maximum likelihood estimation method in both a country-by-country and a panel framework. The forecasting abilities of this model are then scrutinized using an evaluation methodology which was designed recently, specifically for EWSs. When used for predicting currency crises for 16 countries, this new EWS turns out to exhibit significantly better predictive abilities than the existing static one, both in- and out-of-sample, thus supporting the use of dynamic specifications for EWSs for financial crises.